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If we’re required to stay down here for any length of time, I’ll have to bring them in here, he thought. I’ll put that off as long as possible.
Throughout his life on Moonbase, from his implantation in a surrogate womb to liftoff aboard the Earthling, Flattery remembered no place that was private, unguarded. Part of his training as a psychiatrist had taken this into account. The ultimate privacy was death, he knew this lesson well, and it was because he knew this that he was designed to be the executioner of his species. Who was better trained than a Chaplain/Psychiatrist to recognize the Other—artificial intelligence, alien intelligence? And who could be prepared better to deal with such a threat properly? Moonbase had made the right decision, of this he was certain. Of this he was truly proud.
Pride comes before a fall, a voice said from the back of his head. He shrugged it off with the shudder.
It was possible that he had erred slightly in this matter of the kelp. He needed the kelp—Pandora needed the kelp—therefore keeping it alive was not so much a matter of prudence as necessity. The first C/P on Pandora had ordered the kelp destroyed and that act had very nearly destroyed what remained of humanity and the planet itself. Pruning was risky, Current Control was risky, because there was always more kelp than people to control it. Ten years ago it had already gotten out of hand and he had been forced to concentrate solely on stands that marked important trade routes around Pandora’s new coastlines.
Then, five years ago, Crista Galli came into his life. He had suspected at the start that she was an agent of the kelp. He should’ve known better, but this kind of wariness had kept him ahead of the kelp all along. A chromosome scan of the Galli girl proved she was human. He’d had the tech who did the scan killed with the kelp toxin, and so began the rumors about the death-touch of Crista Galli. Subsequent adjustments to her blood chemistry provided opportunity for other evidence against her. These rumors had suited his purposes better than entire legions of security.
A well-placed rumor along with some sleight-of-hand has immeasurable value in political and religious arenas, he thought.
Flattery was comfortable in spite of the conflict raging around him. In fact, he had to control his glee at the prospect of the aftermath.
This will adjust the population problem, he mused. Old Thomas Malthus comes through again.
The survivors who opposed him would starve, it was that simple. He had all the time in the world, all the world’s resources at his fingertips. From his bunker he had access to three of the largest food bins in the world—enough grain and preserved foods to keep five thousand people healthy for at least ten years. The Greens would not provide enough fresh fruit for everyone, but he and a select cadre could be quite happy there indefinitely. All he had to do was wait it out.
His first warning of trouble inside his personal perimeter was a faint hissing that he heard above the wave-slaps in his pool. At the same time he heard high-pitched squeaking above him, then intruder alarms went off. Most of his sensors topside were gone, destroyed or covered by rubble. These, placed in the dozens of swiftgrazer burrows, were not true visual sensors but presence-activated alarms. Flattery summoned his caretaker and the squeaking intensified all around them.
“What is it?” Flattery asked. “It says ‘level A activity.’“
“Swiftgrazers,” the caretaker said. “Level A is set for them, since they’re the most common intruder into the fissures. This shows a lot of them, and deeper than they’re usually found.”
“This squeaking—it’s getting louder.”
“There’s a lot of them, all right,” the caretaker said. He studied the sensor scan and bit his prominent lower lip. “And they’re still coming this way.”
“Trigger your trapsets.”
The caretaker pressed a red spot on the scanner. The hissing that had become squeaks now rose to high-pitched shrieks of anger and terror.
At that moment a few dozen brown swiftgrazers tumbled from a fissure above Flattery and to his right. They were uncomfortably close, spilling from above the hatchway to Flattery’s bunker.
“You’d better clean these up here. We don’t want them established—”
“They’re still coming,” the caretaker said. He pointed farther back to where there was obvious movement in the foliage against the wall. “I’ll need some help here.”
“We’re not bringing any more people into the Greens than necessary. You told me it was safe to keep these rodents around, you take care of them. Now!”
“Yes, sir.” The older man sagged, sighed and armed his lasgun. “There’s a lot of them,” he said, “I’ll need more charges.”
A flurry of little bodies and shrieks caught their attention to the left of the pool, near the loading dock and Flattery’s foil. Behind them a bright, white light broke through the cover of ferns. Now Flattery could see a similar light approaching through the fissure above his hatch.
“I don’t like this,” Flattery said. “What do your precious sensors say now?”
The caretaker flurried his nervous fingers across the face of his portable control unit. “Dead,” he said. “Something’s shorted out the power to all of the sensors.”
Flattery heard the low-throated purr of Archangel behind him, and for the first time realized that it wasn’t merely a handful of swiftgrazers invading his garden. In blinks there were hundreds of them. Something had whipped them to a fever pitch, and they displayed none of their usual wariness of humans.
“Start shooting,” he said, his voice low. “I’ll get some fire-power in here.”
By the time he had undogged his hatch and signaled for help, the light inside the Greens was too great a glare to let him pick out anything but little blurs of movement across his path. He hurried to dockside and secured himself inside the foil.
Flattery started the foil’s engines and began his predive checkout when he realized he’d left the mooring lines secured. He glanced up at the caretaker, who was firing wildly at shadows in the greenery, and saw him suddenly disappear under a thick wad of fur, as though he’d slipped on a giant coat of swiftgrazers and then disappeared. The coat melted to the deck and disappeared, leaving only the man’s weapon, bloody tatters of clothing and a scatter of fleshy bones. Archangel, too, was no match for them, and Flattery had his doubts about the five-man security squad beginning their sweep.
“Not even smart enough to shut the hatch behind them,” he mumbled through gritted teeth. “If they don’t stop them …”
Flattery didn’t have to dwell on the unpleasantness, he had plenty of evidence of swiftgrazer vengeance all around him. The squad had pushed them back far enough that Flattery could make a dash for the mooring lines and free himself from the pier. His only escape now would be to dive out of the Greens and wait. The light in the Greens was so bright that he could barely read his instruments. It nearly surrounded the pool now and he was sure it was some kind of weapon that the Shadows were using against him.
“Rag-tag bunch of bums,” he hissed. “Why don’t they leave well enough alone? Even they must be smart enough to know I’ll be off this planet soon.”
As he flooded the dive compartments he thought he saw faces swirling in the light of the Greens—Crista Galli’s face, Beatriz Tatoosh, Dwarf MacIntosh and some young fuzzhead that he didn’t recognize. He shook his head and attended to his instruments. As he settled beneath the surface of the pool he breathed easier. The foil’s atmosphere was contrived, it was not the cool freshness of t
he Greens, but it was heaven now to Flattery.
His intent was to wait out the incident safely suspended in the waters of his personal lagoon. The foil had full rations for six, enough to last him months, and it could continue to manufacture its own fuel and air supply as long as the membranes held out. They were Islander-grown from kelp tissue in a method perfected several hundred years ago, and had been known to last up to fifty years.
The light above him continued to intensify and the water began a rhythmic chop that alarmed him. He had been reluctant to venture into open water now that the kelpways were down. The idea of picking his way through a tangle of kelp by instruments alone dried his mouth and he forced himself to slow his breathing.
“I’ll head for the launch site,” he told himself. “The nightside supply shuttle should be ready for launch in three hours.”
He marked the time on his log and swung the bow of the foil seaward. Ahead of him lay the vast coastal kelp bed and its infernal lights, blinking at him.
The beachside mortar … they didn’t stump this stand as I ordered.
Somehow, the sight of blue and red flickerings across the depths ahead filled him with as much fear as the mysterious glare that backed him out of the Greens. Flattery didn’t like the feeling of fear.
What if they lob their charges in now? I’d be a dead squawk.
Out of habit, Flattery turned his fear to aggression and throttled himself into the kelp.
The going was much easier than he’d anticipated. Waters off Kalaloch were quiet in spite of the loss of Current Control. That is, they were quiet except for a strange tidal pulse that pursued him from the Greens into open water. The uncontrolled kelp kept the major kelpway to the launch site open. Flattery attributed this to habit, or to perseverance of the last signal sent from Current Control. He was well into the thick of the stand before he realized his mistake.
